


A Heart in Ruin

by dazebras



Category: BioShock Infinite
Genre: Character Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-17
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-02-05 00:43:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1799233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dazebras/pseuds/dazebras
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love is like a tree: it grows by itself, roots itself deeply in our being and continues to flourish over a heart in ruin.  -Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Heart in Ruin

Elizabeth had been stealing glimpses of Paris through her Tears since she was a little girl.  It wasn’t always the loud, bustling energy of a time she was sure was yet to come but sometimes dark alley passaged crawling with red-eyed rats.  These dirty scenes should have frightened her but only inspired a greater desire to experience all the wonders of the city.  Even the unpleasant sides of the city offered sights and sounds and smells she knew she’d never experience from her tower.

She amused herself by planning the journey she knew she would likely never take.  She poured over atlases and historical maps from different eras trying to parse together an itinerary.  She taught herself French so that she would be able to communicate with the locals.

The first book she ever read in French was Victor Hugo’s  _Les Miserable_ _s._   She empathized with Cosette, kept separate from the world by her father.  She envied the girl, though, who was lucky enough to see her father regularly.  Elizabeth had not seen hers more than a handful of times in the last five years.  She had only Songbird to keep her company.  Jean Valjean clearly loved his daughter, but sometimes Elizabeth doubted that Zachary Comstock truly cared for her.

She loved the book dearly and read it until the biding was well-worn, so she begged Songbird to fetch her others.  He brought her a copy of  _The Hunchback of Notre Dame._   At first, she as repulsed by the hideous Quasimodo.  but as she read further, his loneliness touched her deeply.  His figure kept him confined, cloistered.  He longed for contact — to be normal and not fearsome.  He was hated by the community and tried to keep from hating them in return.  She found in him herself.  She did not have any grotesque physical deformity, but she knew that Columbia would find her powers no less monstrous when they discovered the extent of them.  She did.

When Booker DeWitt comes, she thinks she had found her Phoebus.  She is not sure if that made her Esmerelda but hopes they would not meet such a tragic end either way.  He is handsome, she thinks, in a thuggish sort of way; though, she has not met many men for comparison. She believes him to have a brighter moral guidance than he claims. 

She knows him as she shouldn’t, as if their stories were written as two parts of the same narrative.  It sounds trite, but they were meant for each other.  She wonders if maybe she only feels this way because they depend on each other for survival.  It is not affection; she is certain the occasional fluttering in her stomach is anxiety.  Their connection, so swiftly made, is deeper than any common romance could touch. 

He sees her hunchback and finds her aberration  _tremendous._


End file.
